When the Levee Breaks

A headline in the most recent edition of the China People’s Daily giddily proclaims that “a TV singing contest [a la ‘American Idol’] featuring revolutionary songs has proved a massive hit,” (vol. 27, no. 8593), furthering the Party’s Orwellian message of constant progress and paradoxical nostalgia, a cheery march to power and prosperity out of the ashes of the necessary but 30% regrettable Cultural Revolution. China is, officially, a mass in lockstep with dedication and ambition, loving every minute of being Chinese and able to swallow without a wince the contradictions between their economic goals and their Marxist beginnings. Sad songs don’t make it to the radio. Happy days are here again.

I’m going to make a prediction. I predict that within the next ten years, the people of China are going to begin to notice the gap between what they’ve been told and what they know to be true. Their ideological training will fail to match up to their experience of the demands their capitalizing economy makes upon them, and the ever-increasing flow of information both into and out of the country will gather a tidal momentum, a familiarity with things Western in China, a comfort in the West with the not-so-alien-as-previously-thought Chinese. This flow, which is now just more than a trickle, will gather a strength of its own, fueled in part by the overwhelming amount of data transferable via Internet and the voracious, addictive demand for it on the part of Chinese youth. Tens of thousands of government employees are hired for the sole purpose of scanning and censoring websites (including that of yours truly), but eventually, those tens of thousands will fail to compare with the tens, hundreds, thousands of millions of sites and messages and links sent flying through cyberspace daily. This, combined with other media, with increasingly open travel possibilities, with the warmth and sincerity with which Beijing has embraced its role as cultural ambassador for the Olympic Games, will result in a gradual awakening of youth and others to the disparity between their perceptions of authority and their experience with the world. China will adapt, certainly – few things are as impressive as the speed with which a (dis)organization of this magnitude maneuvers and remains flexible and open to change over thousands of creative and bloody years– and when it does, it will not be able to deny the temperament that comes with the sound of bubbles bursting. As Party support of capitalistic growth necessitates further exchange with Western markets, the population will continue to come into contact with historical viewpoints and cultural products that will not tolerate the current precepts of “correct thinking,” and members of Chinese society will be forced to decide between Marx and the market, and between their prescribed blacks and whites and the relentless grey areas of intercultural contact. Already the revolutionary identity is fading, albeit on the surface level. The term of address tongzhi (“Comrade”) sounds dated and is used only in political meetings – its more common application is a friendly reference to members of the Chinese queer community. “Tongzhi” now means “homosexual” more than it means “fellow revolutionary equal.”

When asked to describe the difference between my students here and college students in the U.S., I replied, “Well, you seem much younger.” “We just look younger!” they chimed, beaming in their knee socks and colored plastic hair baubles. “It’s not that,” I said, although you do look like you’re twelve, I could have added. It’s their complete and utter lack of cynicism or sense of irony, their unfamiliarity with jaded humor, their desperate desire for sameness, their horror at the thought of disappointing their parents or violating any other Confucian rule. They do not yet know what it is to be deeply, profoundly in doubt, or to question authority and the things they have been told. But they will. Already changes are happening, and with them, this innocence seems even sweeter, sharpened as it is with the nearness of its end. When it does end, they will have cause for a cynicism and dark irony that few young adults in the U.S. have earned.

If this happens, I want to be here to see the artstorm that ensues. China is a collection of cultures, each with profound aesthetic senses and devout love for detail and intricate craftsmanship. This may be the beginning point of their irony – their capacity for beautiful and finely made things reflected in the gleaming surface of the mountains of cheap plastic crap the country produces through questionably humane and equitable means. How many contradictions can the human spirit embody and maintain its sense of self? (This is a question we American people would do well to ask ourselves, too). How far can a collective and respectful ideal be stretched to include the demands of being both East and West, both socialistic and competitive, growing cancerously and unchecked? The gathering clouds of angst will burst and bring forth a torrent of expression forced through the complex sieve of thousands of years of history, the sensitivity and refinement produced through long traditions, contemplation, reservations and identities, shaken up and mottled with the destructive and illuminating power of the last hundred years. These are people with something to say, and I cannot wait to see how they say it.

~ by knifemaker on November 20, 2007.